She laughed. 'It won't last. Nothing lasts. But I'm happy now.'' Happy, ' I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception--especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence. Hunter S. Thompson
About This Quote

A quote from a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway said in an interview that the big words are the ones that are hard to pin down. It takes either a priest or a fool to use them with confidence. Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 and died in 1961.

Source: The Rum Diary

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More Quotes By Hunter S. Thompson
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  2. Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a...

  3. Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.

  4. No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.

  5. When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.

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